To Know the Path (Full Score and Parts)

$45.00

Weaving ancient texts with new poems by Athena Kildegaard, “To Know the Path” is a cantata in 8 movements following the canonical prayer hours of the day. The journey follows the path of the sun throughout the day from dark to light and back to dark, away from home and towards home.

This is the full score and set of parts. Find the Choral Rehearsal score here.

I. Matins
II. Lauds
III. Prime
IV. Terce
V. Sext
VI. None
VII. Vespers
VIII. Compline

Text: Athena Kildegaard+

Co-Commissioned by: Amherst College Chorale Society, Arianne Abela, director; Border CrosSing and the Unity Singers, Ahmed Anzaldúa, director; and Central Presbyterian Church Choir, Jennifer Anderson, director.

Publisher: Published by Border CroSsing and distributed by Graphite Marketplace.

SKU: BC-009 Categories: , ,
You can peruse this score here.

I. MATINS before dawn
With this ember I will build
a small fire
a beginning
to light the moon’s path

Refuge of morning
be with us now
Into the day we rise
not knowing what it brings

With this small fire I will warm
my hands and your hands
so that I might guide you and others

Refuge of morning
now the path appears
Into the day we rise
open the windows and doors

With this small fire
I light a way
out of one home
into the darkness

Refuge of morning
lead us through the unknown
Into the day we rise
windows and doors we throw open

With this small fire
begun from an ember
I carried from a place
I can no longer call home
with this small fire
I’ll light up whatever says
Here is not your home

Into the day we bring flags
and clean water for healing
Refuge of morning
see where we come

With your small fire
we find the path
and light our way home.

II. LAUDS dawn
Let us praise the door
how it closes and we’re safe inside
how it opens so we can go out into rain or wind or sunshine
carrying children on our shoulders

Let us praise the door and how, when we return, the door opens

Doors open onto boats and trains, cars, wagons, trucks and busses
doors open onto windowless places and onto places full of light
and doors open to the night and to the morning
On the day of birth and the day of death a door opens

Let us praise doors without razor wire or radar systems or spotlights
or infrared sensors or surveillance cameras or weaponized men and
women who carry no keys
doors without drones or key-coded locks or dead bolts or motion
sensors or wireless monitors or remote-controlled cameras

Let us praise doors we can open
with our own hands
doors we open to loved ones and to strangers
doors we pass through
one foot after the other
sure of a welcome on the other side

Let us be the refuge on the other side.

III. PRIME first hour/6:00am
Filter what is poisoned
Whitewash what is dangerous
Scour what is open-sored
Winnow what is pitiful
Ripen what is water-logged
Bandage what is contraband
Pardon what is animal
Welcome what is turned aside

Lava quod est sordidum
Riga Quod est aridum
Sana quod est saucium
Flecta quod est regidum
Fove quod est frigidum
Lava quod est sordidum
Veni sancti spriritus
Veni sancti spiritus
–Latin texts from “Veni Sancte Spiritus”

IV. TERCE the third hour/9:00am
Do you see how, when I hold my needle to the light
the world comes clear?
But my thread is black as the heart of a pig.
And thus I measure the world
stitch by stitch.

If I were but mere dust and ashes
I might speake unto the Lord

First what came before:
an apron filled with ripe plums,
scales on a chipped piano,
sheets drying on a cactus,
the old forgetting,
blood, sand, the long journey

for the Lord’s hand made me of this dust
and the Lord’s hand shall recollect these ashes

Now here is the flat white day
unfolding like mismatched socks,
messages in a language full of tight knots,
a bad knee,
a dry elbow,
prayer that goes unanswered.

the Lord’s hand was the wheel
upon which this vessel of clay was framed

Tomorrow is a jug carried to the water
and brought back full of sand,
a jug carried back filled with sand.
And my thread, black as the heart of a pig
holds together
all that my mouth cannot speak.

The Lord’s hand is the urne
in which these ashes shall be preserved

– Italic text by John Donne

V. SEXT the sixth hour/noon
I fled my country,
the violent, the hungry, the wounded
I fled my people
these aren’t people
these aren’t people

I left my father’s murdered body
and the gangs that show their knives
these aren’t people
these aren’t people

We tied ourselves to one another
with one red ribbon,
my children, my sister, my mother
these aren’t people
these aren’t people

Now we wait for asylum
flashlights wake us in the night
we drink bad water
brought by animals

these are animals

My son plays games
of agent and coyote

we aren’t animals

All night we curl
into one another
like animals seeking warmth
and refuge

we are people
we are animals
we are people
we are people

VI. NONE the ninth hour/3:00pm
O vos omnes,
qui transistis per viam
attendite et videte
si est dolor,
sicut dolor meus.
Stabat Mater dolorosa
Juxta crucem lacrimosa,

O all you
who pass along the way
behold and see
if there is any sorrow
like unto my sorrow.
There stood the Mother grieving,
beside the cross weeping.

– Lamentations 1:12 and Stabat Mater

VII. VESPERS Evening
The feet of the hungry
bear the fruit of hope
The feet of the lost
make trails in the wilderness
The feet of the persecuted
bleed into the night
The feet of the humble
grow brown as earth
The feet of the abandoned
find a way through thorns
The feet of the fearful
walk on petals of hope
The feet of those who are maimed or
cursed or made to be alien
are the feet of the holy
are the feet of the people
walking the path to know the path

VIII. COMPLINE to complete
Light a candle at noon, a light in the light
small reminder of darkness to come

out of lux

hold into the light the light of another
one flame bending toward flame

out of lux

bring your light to lighten the way
of another whose lightness is heavy

out of lux

trim the wick to lengthen the light
make known the homebound path

out of lux

raise up your light as a beacon
and stand for the wronged and forgotten

out of lux

cover your fire, and rake up the embers
may you sleepe without feare
may you sleepe without feare

– Italic text is by John Donne

Athena Kildegaard (b. 1959) is the author of six books of poetry and the co-editor of an anthology of poems about motherhood (Rocked by the Waters, Nodin Press). She has been a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in poetry and her book Prairie Midden (Tinderbox Editions) won the 2023 WILLA Literary Award for poetry. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Lake Region Arts Council, she has twice won the LRAC artist fellowship, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Kildegaard’s poems have been set to music by many composers, including Libby Larsen, Jennifer Higdon, Shruthi Rajesekar, Frank Horvat, Jonathan Newmark, and others. Linda Kachelmeier set a series of poems from Kildegaard’s book Course as art song, and Kildegaard and Kachelmeier have collaborated on a commission for the University of Minnesota Morris, where Kildegaard teaches.

“To Know the Path” is structured on the canonical hours of the day that stem from ancient Jewish prayer traditions. Early Christians continued the practice and monasteries formally structured them into eight separate hours. Each movement follows the path of the sun throughout the day, starting before dawn when it is still dark (Matins), and progressing to after it has set and is dark again (Compline).

Musically, I have been influenced by ancient chants from many different sources including Georgian Orthodox, Gregorian chant, Greek Orthodox, and Kabbalist Jewish prayers. I see these all as a call for communal prayer and devotion, a way to connect with each other.

Silence is a key part of this work and is built into each movement to create some meditative space for the musicians and listeners. This cantata uses prayer as a metaphor for opening our eyes (awareness) to knowing the path, and our willingness to get on the path with each other (compassion).

From the Author:
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that in 2018 almost 71 million people around the world were displaced from their homes. In that year some 37 thousand people were newly displaced every day. These numbers, this despair, is possibly unimaginable.

In the 14th Century a Franciscan known as the Pseudo-Bede wrote about the necessity to imagine as fully as possible the Lord’s suffering on the cross. He thought that in prayer you must “regard yourself as if you had our Lord suffering before your very eyes, and that he was present to receive your prayers.”

I have been watching the tragedy unfolding on our southern border—people coming north to escape violence and poverty and I have been watching how our current administration is unwilling to welcome them. Writing the words of “To Know the Path” has been an effort to imagine that tragedy. I have borrowed ideas from a New York Times editorial by an anonymous Salvadoran woman who was held with her son in a detention center. I have used phrases from John Donne’s moving “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.” I borrowed the rhythms of St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Lauda Sion,” and I made a very loose translation of part of the “Veni Sancte Spiritus.”

In this work, the hours of prayer are a journey from dark to light and back to dark, a journey away from home and toward home. Finding and making a home are quintessential acts of dignity. Like Medieval religious followers, we must imagine ourselves into the shoes of the migrants and refugees around the world. These words are my prayer for understanding and welcome and for the dignity we all deserve.

– Athena Kildegaard

Conductor’s Note:
Having grown up and lived for most of my life on the border between Mexico and the United States, this open wound has been a constant presence in my life. It is a humanitarian disaster exacerbated by politicians with no interest in solving it. They sensationalize “migrant caravans” for political gain and illegally deny asylum status to refugees who are fleeing horrible conditions that were caused or worsened by decades of American foreign policy in Latin America. I myself left everything behind to flee cartel violence in Northern Mexico when I came to the United States.

One of my first projects when I started Border CrosSing was to commission works that would in some way be connected to this reality. It was also important to me that the composers and authors involved in this music were from both sides of the border, rather than exclusively of Latin American descent. Due to my heritage and the nature of my work, I often get unsolicited requests from composers who have written music related to these issues. The vast majority of these are well-meaning but shallow and problematic in some way, and in the worst cases are cynically trying to profit from an ongoing social justice issue, much like the same politicians that use migrant issues to improve their poll numbers. Sincerity and honesty, along with craft, originality, and depth, can be hard to find.

I have admired Linda’s music for many years and greatly enjoyed collaborating with her when she sang as an alto in Border CrosSing in our first years. Her music is anything but shallow, bringing together a vast knowledge of vocal music and history with a beautiful balance between pain and joy, consonance and dissonance. I knew this work was special from our first read-through of drafts of the fifth movement and seventh movements, in Linda’s dining room, where I played percussion and sang along with several other friends. I am proud to have helped bring this piece to life by co-commissioning it, conducting its premiere with Border CrosSing, performing it with my choirs at Unity Church Unitarian the next year, and lending advice when it was asked for, and am now very excited to publish it in our series.

– Ahmed Anzaldua

Premiered by Border CrosSing.

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